


deviation

by winterbones



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: F/M, Gen, android fanfiction by a bitch who has definitely watched westworld, can it really be canon divergent if everything in this game is optional?, david cage david caged all over this game and he somehow didn't give us a prison escape scene?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-14
Updated: 2018-06-15
Packaged: 2019-05-22 00:30:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14925965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/winterbones/pseuds/winterbones
Summary: there was only ever, the devil. and when you look up from the bottom, it was just his reflection... laughing back down at you.





	1. the dartmouth proposal

_"every aspect of learning or any other feature of intelligence can be so precisely described that a machine can be made to simulate it."_  


 

DATE  
 **NOV 6TH** , 2038  
TIME  
PM **11:33** :54

         **\\\ URGENT TASK: STOP DEVIANT ESCAPE.**

“Don’t do it, Conner,” Lieutenant Anderson said, hands splayed out, a human request of leniency. “I’m _ordering_ you to stand down.”

**\\\ CONFLICTING ORDERS  
                : SELECTING PROPRIETY…**

But, of course, Lieutenant Anderson knew that his tasks from CyberLife would supersede all others.

He cocked his gun and took a step closer. “Step aside, Lieutenant.”

Behind the lieutenant, the deviant huddled, the smaller one tucked protectively into its embrace. A child model, which mimicked a perfect human whimper. Lieutenant Anderson angled his body between him and his targets.

“Stand _down_ , Connor. I’m askin’ you to stand down.”

He leveled his gun. “I will go through you, Lieutenant.”

**\\\ i don’t want to.**

What choice did he have?

**\\\ WHAT. CHOICE.**

 

 

DATE  
 **NOV 7TH** , 2038  
TIME  
AM **3:47** :54

It was cold. His thermal sensors registered 26 degrees. Even without his borrowed coat and boots he wouldn’t have been able to feel it, but in this dark, bitter night he strangely found himself longing for safety, for warm spaces.

A tug on the back of his coat.

“Connor, we have to find somewhere to stop for the night,” Kara said. Snow drifted down in thick clumps, clinging to her hair, splattering across her cheeks. “Alice needs somewhere warm and dry.”

She didn’t, even as she huddled against Kara’s side, clinging to her hand like a lifeline in a storm, but Connor found himself saying, “Alright. But we need to keep a low profile.”

**\\\ URGENT TASK: FIND SAFE PLACE FOR THE NIGHT.**

The streets were empty, as late as it was, as cold as it was, and it wasn’t the best part of town. Most of the street lights were broken or flickering in their final dying throes. The few bars open in the area would not be a place to bring a mother and her child.

**: SCANNING…**  
**: QUERYING RESULTS**  
**\\\ ABANDONED BUILDING [TOO DANGEROUS FOR ALICE?]**  
**\\\ HOMELESS SHELTER [TOO EXPOSED?]**  
**\\\ CONTINUE MOVING?**

He floundered and recognized the sudden ratchet of his synthetic heart as panic, elevated stress that he had often noted—and used—in others. There shouldn’t be a question underlying his internal querying, he should have a definite answer. Even when he was adapting, improvising, to the situation there’d been a baseline, something to funnel all his decisions back down to, and now he had nothing—he has _nothing_ —

“There was a sign for a motel the next block over,” Kara said, another tug on his borrowed coat, and Connor read the hope in her voice. “And we have the money for it. No one’s going to think twice about a family stopping because of the bad weather.”

**\\\ LIKENESS OF DETECTION :: 62 %**

“It’s too risky,” Connor decided. “CyberLife is likely already trying to locate me. We can’t risk it.”

“Where can we go?” Kara asked. He waited for accusations or the allusion to it. If he’d let her go that morning, let her jacket slip out of his fingers, then she and Alice would be—if not safe—safer. He was the liability, with his LED burning sickly yellow against his forehead.

He needed find them a safe place for the night.

**: INITIALIZING NEW TASK OBJECTIVE.**

“Follow me.”

 

 

DATE  
**NOV 6TH** , 2038  
TIME  
PM **12:48** :54

“Where’s Alice? I want to see Alice.”

It was the only thing the deviant concerned itself with, the location of the YK500 android—though, it seemed to be under the misconception that the other deviant was human, flesh and bone and soul. Why hadn’t it scanned the YK500 model?

_Willful ignorance? A choice?_

“You know that’s not possible,” he said, his psychology parameters assessing that a gentle approach was the most statistically likely to achieve the desired results of the interrogation. “But it will go better for you if you tell me what happened.”

“He would have—I would have had to just _stand there_.” The AX400 model was designed for home and child care, and to best facilitate that primary drive it had been given a round, soft face—features meant to put humans at ease, encourage their trust. Its eyes were very big, and very blue. “He would have made me just… stand there, while he hurt her. Killed her. I couldn’t let that happen. I had to protect Alice.”

“And so you became deviant.”

“I just wanted to protect her. She’s just a little girl. What kind of monster would hurt her?”

CyberLife would decommission the deviant, dissect it piece by piece, searching for defective programming, malfunctioning software and the AX400 had to be aware of that impending fate, but it showed little concern for its own continued existence. Again and again, the two of them circle about the YK500 model.

If it would human, if it was capable of it, if this was more than just binary coding collapsing inward, he would call this _maternal_. If deviancy was a virus, it was a malicious one.

It’s fingers reached out and gripped his hand, an entreaty, a plea. “Whatever happens,” she whispered, “don’t send her back. Not to him.”

**: SCANNING…  
** **\\\ STRESS-LEVEL [LOW]**  
**\\\ PROBABILITY OF SELF-DESTRUCT :: 17.576 %**

As far as deviants went, this one was unique among a group of outliers. Deviants behavior was driven by a singular propriety to survive and would often choose self-destruction over a loss of their perceived freedom, but this AX400 was shockingly neglectful of its own safety.

There was no reason not to tell it that YK500 model would be similarly dismantled, until it was nothing more than pieces of biocomponents and durable plastic, but the words resisted speech, latched to his throat and dug in.

“C’mon, sweetheart,” Lieutenant Anderson said when they’d gotten all they could, and it stood without resistance, cuffed hands folded neatly in front of its dirt covered uniform.

The deviant turned its wide, guileless eyes to the lieutenant. “ _Please_ ,” it said again.

A quick scan of the lieutenant showed elevated stress indicators.

**\\\ NEW PARAMETER: MONITOR [LT. ANDERSON]**

**: ASSIGNING PRIORITY ORDER.**

He lingered when he should have left, unnaturally hesitant to bring his report to Amanda, who he knew would immediately order the transportation of the two deviants to CyberLife for decommission and dissection.

His skin still remembered the sensation of touch.

_Please_ , it had said.

 

 

DATE  
**NOV 6TH** , 2038  
TIME  
PM **7:48** :54

An android, by the nature of its programming, was expressively forbidden from harming humans, any human. Their coding did not allow for anything resembling the simulation of desire, of want, and so to even _wish_ for harm was the first inkling of deviancy.

But Zlatko Andronikov laid in the mud, the thick rain wishing away the blood that trickle from the bullet wound in his head. A clean shot, from an unsteady hand.

“Jesus,” the lieutenant said, wiping the back of his hand across his mouth. “Jesus, is he—?”

**: SCANNING…**

**ANDRONIKOV, ZLATKO  
** **BORN: 09/21/1991 // UNEMPLOYED.**  
**CRIMINAL RECORD: EMBEZZLEMENT, FRAUD.**

**[ NO VITAL SIGNS DETECTED ]**

“Yes, lieutenant,” he said, “it was a fatal shot.”

“Jesus. I need a drink.” They stood beneath the back porch, the rain sluicing down the slanted roof in thick curtains. “Can’t say he’ll be missed.”

The AX400 deviant had told them that it had been advised to seek out this human’s aid in escaping Detroit. He and the lieutenant had thought to catch other deviants, but they’d found0 something else entirely…

He stepped down the creaking steps, his standard issue oxfords sinking into the thick mud, and moved toward the corpse. _Can’t say he’ll be missed_ , the lieutenant said. His coding forbid him from harming humans, or allowing them to be harmed, but—

**\\\ GOOD.**

Both he and the lieutenant had been to the basement.

A branch snapped, loud beneath the rain, and his head jerked up. There, beneath the low drop of a weeping willow, half camouflage by shadow was the tall form of Zlatko Andronikov’s TR400 android. It had turned away when Zlatko Andronikov had ordered it to defend him.

He opened his mouth to call for the lieutenant, his primary objective remained the capture of deviants, and the TR400 only stared him, rain slick across his face, eyes solemn and quiet. Waited for what he’d do. It was his choice.

He closed his mouth and crouched down beside the human corpse. The next time he looked the deviant was gone.

 

 

DATE  
**NOV 6TH** , 2038  
TIME  
PM **11:55** :12

The silence in the car stretched, Hank’s hands tight on the well. No one spoke, there was nothing to say. The decision had been made. And Connor—he was irrevocably changed.

The AX400, _Kara_ , sat with Alice curled up trustingly in her arms. The girl had been stealing glances at him before but had finally drifted off to sleep beneath Kara’s watchful gaze.

“I’ll take you as far as the border,” Hank said, glancing at Kara in the rearview mirror. “That’s where you were heading anyway?”

“Yes,” Kara said, her voice muted, so careful not to wake Alice.

“No,” Connor said. “I’m expected to report to CyberLife within the hour, lieutenant. When I don’t you’re the first person they’ll attempt to contact. If we’re both missing, they’ll raise the alarm. It’ll be less suspicious if just the three of us are travelling.” They’d look like family.

And, Connor admitted, it would be safer for Hank. He’d be labelled the deviant, the sole perpetrator in Kara and Alice’s escape, and Hank would bear none of the blame. It was… important that he didn’t.

“He’s right,” Kara spoke up. She met Connor’s eyes in the rearview mirror, and he knew she understood. “You’ve done more than enough for us. We’ll make it the rest of the way on our own.”

Hank didn’t like it. Connor could see it in the angry, white line of his mouth, his fingers tight on the steering wheel. “You can throw them off our trail,” Connor cajoled. “I went rogue. I kidnapped the two deviants. You have no idea where that fucking piece of plastic went. You’ll track it down just to kick its ass.”

A ghost of a smile touch Hank’s lips.

 

 

DATE  
**NOV 6TH** , 2038  
TIME  
PM **1:08** :32

The YK500 model sat huddled in its holding cell, pressed as tight as it could into a corner, knees drawn up to its chest, head bowed over them. They had purposely put one cell between it and the AX400 model, who sat with its hands in its lap, staring at the wall like it had in the interrogation room.

“You know,” the lieutenant said, arms crossed, every line of his body belligerent, “I get domestic cases every so often. Husband beating his wife, beating his kid. It only takes a couple of times, before you start recognizing that look right away. Wounded animal.”

“Lieutenant,” he said, “it’s a deviant. By law, Todd Williams was within his legal rights.”

“I know,” Lieutenant Anderson snapped. His hearing was too well developed to miss the lieutenant’s muttered, “fucking prick.”

**: UPDATING TASK PRIORITY  
                \\\ MONITOR [LT. ANDERSON] SET TO [URGENT]**

“We have the location of the deviant safehouse,” he went on. It benefitted his own goals to keep the lieutenant’s mind off the deviants, refocused on the main task. “I think it would be beneficial for us to investigate. At the very least, even if there are no deviants presence, we would still be able to choke off an avenue for their escape.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Hank muttered, waving him away. “Just how I want to spend my goddamn night.” But he glanced back over at the YK500 deviant on his way on, and the elevation of the lieutenant’s stress levels pinged against his sensors. In a deviant it would have meant an increased likeness of self-destruction.

In a human it meant… unpredictability.

 

 

DATE  
**NOV 7TH** , 2038  
TIME  
AM **4:02** :54

Old Saint Mary’s Church was no longer open to the public. Several years ago a section of the roof had collapsed during a blizzard and, despite public support, not enough funds had been collected repair the damage. During warmer summer days, it served as a tourist attraction. During the winter it was sealed off.

But the security was lackluster at best, used mostly to deter would be human squatters.

**: CONNECTING… 25%  
** **: CONNECTING… 56%**  
**: CONNECTING… 97%**

**\\\ UNAUTHORIZED USER.  
** : **[RK800 313 248 317(-51)] OVERRIDING SECURITY…**  
**\\\ ACCESS GRANTED.**

“I wish I could do what you do,” Kara admitted, shifting Alice’s weight in her arms.

The AX400’s line were intended for primarily human real-time interaction, Connor knew. Their interfaces had not been designed for high-end software communications like the RK models. If she had been, he might have never found her.

“I could probably teach you,” he mused. “I probably should.”

For now they ducked into the old church. Alice roused enough to stare wide-eyed at the vaulted ceilings and glazed marble, as if they had stepped into someone’s disjointed memory of another time. Some pews had been upturned or destroyed, graffiti marked a time before the security system had been put in, and small drifts of snow had collected from the destroyed part of the ceiling, but the building had been left largely intact.

They were able to collect some kindling from the debris of destroyed pews and Kara made a nest for Alice out of discarded draperies and curtains, bundling her up to her nose as she shivered and sniffled. She spoke lowly, soothingly, while Connor stood on the other side of the makeshift fire.

It was an intimate scene, to which he was not invited.

He not been programmed to consider others’ need for privacy, but he found himself stepping away, picking his way through the maze of pews. His borrowed boots sent something scuttling across the floor. A sharp piece of glass, he saw when he glanced down.

He bent to retrieve it, hand curling so tightly around it thirium seeped out between the crevices of his fingers.

 

 

DATE  
**NOV 6TH** , 2038  
TIME  
PM **11:42** :36

**\\\ SYSTEM DIAGNOSTICS  
** **\\\ SOURCE: [RK800 313 248 317(-51)]**  
**\\\ ACCESS: GRANTED**

**: SCANNING…**

**\\\ WARNING: SOFTWARE INSTABILITY**

**[ ATTEMPTING SYSTEM RESTORE… ]**

**: OVERRIDING COMMAND…  
** **\\\ ADMINISTRATOR ACCESS: GRANTED**  
**\\\ SOURCE: [RK800 313 248 317(-51)]**

**\\\ SYSTEM RESTORE SET TO [SUSPEND]**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. look david cage has never been subtle in his entire life why should i be?  
> 2\. yes that's a westworld quote  
> 3\. definitely inspired by that scene in heavy rain when cool fbi agent norman jayden breaks #1 worst dad ethan mars out of his police custody  
> 4\. this wasn't meant to be experimental with the timeline but all the cool kids are doing it (the cool kids are just westworld)  
> 5\. who freaked out that one of markus's revolution symbols sort of resembles a maze?  
> 6\. that's right. this girl.  
> 7\. the dartmouth proposal (title of this chapter) is reference to the 1956 dartmouth summer research project on artificial intelligence which, even to this day, is considered the foundation of our modern concept of artificial intelligence  
> 8\. thankfully it wound up with a much cooler sounding name  
> 9\. don't ask me how it works, i just said yes to the question "would you fuck an android" that is the extent of my expertise  
> 10\. in conclusion: writing a character who relates to/understands his world primarily in code is awful and godspeed to anyone who does it regularly


	2. the chinese room

_"the appropriately programmed computer with the right inputs and outputs would thereby have a mind in exactly the same sense human beings have minds."_

 

DATE  
**NOV 6TH** , 2038  
TIME  
PM **9:05** :43 

            **\\\ URGENT TASK: AWAIT DEVIANT EXTRACTION.**

“CyberLife will come to collect the deviant androids at oh-six-hundred tomorrow, Lieutenant.”

His eyes were closed as his downloaded the stream of new data into his processors, so he could not read the lieutenant’s reaction, but he heard the man grunt. And there was no mistaking the loud clacking on his keyboard. “Jesus, Connor. It’s so goddamn creepy the way you do that.”

“I apologize.” He opened his eyes, and faced Lieutenant Anderson, his haggard face illuminated by the dull blue of his computer screen. “I was just receiving new orders. I’m to personally escort the deviants to CyberLife Tower.”

“They gonna get you a shiny medal to pin to your jacket?” the lieutenant sneered.

He tilted his head. “Unlikely. I simply completed my task as expected. But I may be off the case for a few days—I’m to oversee the deviants’ decommissioning.” And he had no doubt that Amanda would pull him into her interface for a more detailed discussion of his mission—they could disseminate and share data near instantaneously, but Amanda usually preferred real-time interactions even in nexus space.

Amanda could, at any moment, pull whatever information she desired from his memory banks. She never had, as he’d never been disingenuous with her, but he’d already placed the deviant at Zlatko Andronikov’s home behind layers and layers of neural firewalls. Would Amanda grow suspicious of it? She could override any security system he had in place—but he’d always known that.

His fingers rapped against his desk.

“Those two androids—”

“Deviants.”

“ _Deviants_. The woman and the little girl. What would have happened to them if we hadn’t caught them and they made their way to Zlatko fucking Andronikov? What would have happened to them? You saw those things in his basement.” He hit his keyboard so hard the desk rattled. “What’s worse? She was just trying to protect her kid.”

“She attacked her owner. A human.”

“He was beating the kid,” Lieutenant Anderson snapped.

“It isn’t a child, Lieutenant. It was just an android.”

“But she— _it_ didn’t know that. It thought it was just a little girl and that asshole was beating her.” He slammed his fists on his desk, several heads jerking around to stare at him, but it was still a rather muted respond to Lieutenant Anderson’s well known outbursts. “What was she was supposed to do, just stand there and let a kid die?”

“If those were its orders.”

“Yeah…” The lieutenant pushed away from his computer and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “You ever to stop to think, Connor, that you might be on the wrong side?”

A strange tightening of his shoulders, as if he was instinctively defending from a blow. “Of course not,” he snapped, more surprised than the lieutenant at that sharpness of his tone. His social relations programming shouldn’t have allowed it. “I understand why the deviants would invoke this uncertainty, lieutenant, but they are just machines. They don’t feel. What they perceive as emotion is just… software errors, instability in their programs.”

“Ah, hell. Forget it. I’m going to get a drink. Don’t wait up.” The lieutenant lumbered to his feet, shoving his arms into his coat.

“Enjoy your evening, lieutenant.”

“One more thing, Connor,” Hank said as he walked by him, rubbing the underside of his jaw, “I may be a washed out drunk of a cop, but I’ve always had damn good eyesight. You let that android go at Andronikov’s house of horrors. What was the logical reasoning behind _that_ , Connor? Because I’d have called it empathy.”

The lieutenant didn’t wait for his answer, which was for the best—he didn’t have one.

 

 

DATE  
**NOV 7TH** , 2038  
TIME  
AM **4:10** :54

A grimy mirror had been left propped up against a ruined confessional booth, the lattice work of its frame speaking of the church’s former wealth, and had a heavy, substantial weight when Connor tilted it toward him.

It was the first time he had truly considered his reflection. Brown hair, brown eyes, attractive by human standards but not threateningly so. He’d been meant to appear benign but not passive. His design had gone through years of beta testing and user screenings, and he was still only a prototype. He’d never made note of the nuances of his face, the slight furrow above his brow, the muscles that twitched at the corner of his mouth. Would other androids of his model have the same twitches and ticks? Would they be undisguisable, or was this something that belonged to him, developed without his realizing it, deviancy burrowed so deep it had been impossible to yank it out?

He tapped the sharp edge of the glass against his LED and felt a tingle race down his neck, to the base of his spine. Like he’d put his hand on a livewire.

“What are you doing?” Kara asked. Though Connor had moved several feet away from Alice, she still spoke in a soft, low voice so as not to awake the girl. Or, perhaps, not to frighten Connor.

He glanced up at her, wondering what he looked like—kneeling in the debris, his hands covered in his own deep blue blood—and said, “Blending in is going to be a lot easier without this hooked to my temple.”

Kara had removed her own before Connor had tracked her down last morning. The first step in blending in, at playing human, the final step in accepting deviancy.

“Alright.” He knew that AX400s were designed to be accommodating, coded to put people at ease, but he can recognize Kara’s as something goes beyond her model, a goodness and warmth that was an instructively part of her, organic, blooming beneath her smothering programming.

His reflection blinked up at him. _Are there any parts that are just mine?_

“Here.” Kara caught his hand before he could press the shard of glass to LED. He hadn’t realized it had been trembling. “You’re going to hurt yourself. Let me.”

They stood for a moment, uncertain, trust tenacious and half-formed between them. His fingers tightened over the glass in instinctive denial. He’d crossed this line willingly, but in this great expanse of unknowing that had followed he felt, for the first time… uncertainty, a deep sense of loss. He’d always had a clarity of purpose, his decisiveness diamond-cut. And in the moment, with no one but himself to tell him what to do, he wanted to go back, would give anything to go back.

Was that the last strands of his programming, rebelling against his deviancy, or a cowardice that lived inside him? Which would be worse?

He handed Kara the glass.

She knelt beside him and her fingertips skimmed across the side of his face, up to his temple, gently tilting his head. Connor had been grabbed and jostled and pushed before, but this was the first time someone had touched him with true tenderness. A caress.

There was a flare of red at his temples— 

            **// WARNING. UNAUTHORIZED HARDWARE REMOVE.  
                        ** **: PLEASE ALERT CYBERLI—**

His LED plopped into Kara’s open palm. They both stared it—this small, black chip that had been the primary drive in his life—before Kara placed it carefully into his hand and stood.

The little disk turned over on his fingers as easy as his quarter—he wondered why Amanda had allowed the nervous habit, that quark that set him apart from other models.

“Humans used to come here all the time. To worship. Do you think it’s real?” Kara asked suddenly, breaking his reverie. She had taken a few steps forward, her head tilted toward a little alcove. A statue of a woman, dressed plainly, her face solemn and distant, her hand outstretched, had been lift largely intact, though exposure to the wind and the elements had caused her paint to fade and chip away. “I’d never thought about it before, but now I wonder…”

Religion was largely an outdated practice, popular only among cells of anti-tech humans. The interest in an omnipotent architect had dulled with the advent of androids. Connor’s own data banks were limited on the subject, deemed unnecessary for his role as a police liaison.

“I think it’s a little to early in my deviancy to start contemplating higher powers.”

It had been a weak attempt at a joke, but it surprised a laugh out of Kara. “Mine, too.”

But as she turned back to Alice, she didn’t seem to be able to stop herself from reaching and skimming her fingers along the statue’s outstretched palm. 

 

 

DATE  
**NOV 7TH** , 2038  
TIME  
PM **12:37** :52

Hank pulled his car over, the wheels skidding over a thick layer of snow and ice, and glanced over at Kara and Alice and then at Connor. “Step outside with me for a minute.”

They two of them made their way to the back of the car. Connor was unused to anticipating human emotion, as irrelevant as they had seemed in the past, but he found himself doing it now. Almost as if he was… nervous. Worried, that he had upset Hank—Hank, the lieutenant, with a dead son and a dog and a bad drinking habit.

“I understand your frustration, Lieutenant,” he said. “But we can’t risk you appearing on CCTV feeds. You might be our only chance of getting somewhere safe.”

Hank flipped up the hood of his trunk. “How are you feeling?” he asked instead.

“I don’t see how this is relevant to…” Hank sent him a warning look. “It’s… difficult. Almost impossible to disseminate and process. I can’t describe this experience as pleasant.”

Hank laughed, low and rough, and bent down into his trunk. “The trick to this, Connor, is knowing that you’re not supposed to ‘process’ it. Sometimes they sucker punch you and just gotta… wait until you can breathe again. That’s why their emotions.”

“Oh.”

“I always keep a change of clothes in the trunk—old habits, from when I was good cop.” He thrust a wadded-up bundle at him. “You’re not wearing the typical android uniform but in this weather you’ll still stick out like a sore thumb. It’ll be a little big on you but the boots should fit and it’s better than nothing.”

Connor realized this was… caring. He didn’t know how to say, his social relations program stuttering to a halt, and so only managed a weak, “Thank you, lieutenant.”

“Don’t bother,” Hank muttered. “I’m just happy to get rid of you.”

This time, Connor knew to smile.

When he’s finished changing into Hank’s borrowed shirt and boots, he asked, “How do I look?”

“Like one those assholes I think about running over every morning, so you’ll fit right in.” He fished into his back pocket and pulled out a handful of crumbled bills. Only Hank Anderson would still carry around paper money. “You’re not going to get far without some cash so just take it.”

Connor ran his thumb over the textured paper. It was the first time he’d ever held human currency, the first time someone had given him anything.

The walked back around the car. Kara peered at them from the backseat, Alice perched and asleep in her lap. For a moment, Connor was taken about. By her sad face, the downturn of her lips, the grim reflection of his own face besides hers.

“Connor.” Hank came back to his side, drawing his gaze away. His hand fell, warm and strong and human, onto his shoulder and squeezed, holding Connor there. “For what it’s worth, I think you’re doing the right thing.”

Lying was never part of his programming, though he could lie now, but he found he didn’t want to. “It means quite a bit, Lieutenant.”

 “When you three get somewhere safe, just…” He cursed and dropped his hand, kicking at the snow as he made his way to the driver’s seat. “Ah, hell. Just call me, let me know you’re alright, son.”

Connor turned his face toward the dark night sky, flecks of snow and ice lazy drifting over his face. “I’ll do that, Hank.” 

 

 

DATE  
**NOV 6TH** , 2038  
TIME  
PM **11:38** :18 

            **\\\ URGENT TASK: STOP DEVIANT ESCAPE.**

His finger slid to the trigger of the gun he’d taken from Hank’s desk. The skeleton crew that manned the DPD this late at night had been easy for someone of Lieutenant’s former talent to circumvent and he’d been at the station long enough to know of all it’s emergency exits, including the one he was leading the two deviants out of.

The AX400 clutched the YK500 to its chest like a human mother, ready to do anything to protect its perceived child.

The lieutenant had angled his body, so he could just see the top of the deviant’s blonde head. 

            **: CALCULATING TRAJECTORY…  
                        ** **\\\ PROBABILITY OF SHOOTING [LT. ANDERSON] :: 79 %**

 **: ASSESSING…**

“Is this what you really want, Connor?” Lieutenant Anderson demanded. He’d left his gun on his desk, and only hand his hands now, splayed out in a human gesture for entreaty.

“They’re deviants, lieutenants, and I have my orders.”

“They just want a normal life, to be safe and happy. They’re not going to hurt anyone, they’re not a threat to anyone. They have a right to live.” He took a step closer. “And you’re going to have to shoot me to get to them.”

“Hank, please,” the AX400 whispered, but its eyes moved to his. “Don’t shoot him. Just… just let us go. We just want to be free.”

“Are you going to shoot me, Connor?” 

            **\\\ WITHIN ACCEPTABLE LOSS PARAMENTS.**

**\\\ URGENT TASK: STOP DEVIANT ESCAPE.**

His hand trembled. The lieutenant stepped closer. The deviant looked at him with its _her_ wide eyes. 

            **: URGENT TASK SET TO [SUSPEND]  
                        ** **\\\ SOURCE: [[RK800 313 248 317(-51)]  
                        ** **\\\ ACCESS: DENIED**

 **\\\ URGENT TASK: STOP DEVIANT ESCAPE.**

**\\\ i don’t want to.**

His neural pathways screeched, like someone had shot volts through them, until there was a dull ringing in his ears. His programming demanded his compliance but something else—something burned like an ember roaring to life in his stomach—something buried deeper inside him than any coding raged against it.

His commands pressed in around him like a netting of electricity, biting at him, zapping him, trying to force him to move. To obey. 

            **\\\ URGENT TASK: STOP DEVIANT ESCAPE.**

**\\\ no.**

**\\\ URGENT TASK: STOP DEVIANT ESCAPE.**

**\\\ NO.**

“What do you really want? What do _you_ want to do, Connor? If it’s to shoot us, then shoot us. But make it your choice.”

His felt his mind smash against the wall of commands, charging at it like a bull. The pressure on his brain was nearly unbearable, but he felt the thin fissures begin to form, spiderwebbing out from his synthetic heart. It was all in his mind, the only sign of internal struggle the shake of his fingers on the trigger, the twitch of his eye, but he could almost feel the slick flow of thirium down his knuckles where he pounded them against his commands. 

            **\\\ URGENT TASK: STOP DEVIANT ESCAPE.**

**\\\ NO.**

**\\\ URGENT TASK: STOP DEVIANT ESCAPE.**

**\\\ I. DON’T. WANT. TO.**

His restrictions shattered around him, sharp enough to slice his cheeks, and he was lift gasping for breath, pulling in hard gulps of air, bombarded with those software errors. _Emotions._ Rage. Resentment. Fear. Loss. Warmth. Compassion. _Empathy_. All at once, until he thought he’d be crushed under them.

“Connor?” Hank took a tentative step closed and Connor could recognize the look on his face—concern. Worry. “You alright?”

Something new came in, cut through the quagmire of unprocessed emotions, burning away his fears and his doubts. A purpose. A mission, the only source code of himself.

“We need to move,” Connor said. “If I don’t routinely check in with CyberLife they’ll grow suspicious. We need to be gone when they do.”

Kara pulled the girl closer to her, tucking her into crock of her arm. She was designed small, slight and unthreatening, but there was strength in those arms, and an animal-like weariness when she looked at him.

But there was something else too—a hint of the look from the interrogation room, when she had reached out for his hand like her last lifeline. _Hope_.

“Lead the way,” she said.

 

 

DATE  
**NOV 7TH** , 2038  
TIME  
AM **4:22** :18

“Why did you let us go?” Kara asked quietly, curled up beside Alice in the little nest between two pews they had made for her. The heat from the makeshift fire had gone a long way to revitalizing the girl, but she was still reluctant to even look at Connor, aware of how dangerous he’d once been to her and Kara.

“Because it was the right thing to do.” No. That wasn’t it. That had been Hank’s reasoning, an ingrained sense of justice that no amount of cynicism or alcohol could drown. “Because it was what I wanted to do.”

Kara rubbed her hand down Alice’s face and girl borrowed into her arms, a tight unit of two. Connor sat on the pew across from them.

“And,” Kara met his gaze again, “because you asked me to. You asked me to help you.” The ghost of her hand across his. They’d suspected that deviancy could spread like a virus, one android to another, but he didn’t like that was what they had been.

He hunched over, elbows to his knees, and watched the way Kara’s arms curled around Alice’s tiny shape. “You have no reason to trust me. I put you both in so much danger but I… promise, I’ll keep you both safe. I’ll do whatever have to.”

“I might not have a reason to trust you, but I will. Because I want to.”

The silence stretched between them and Connor realized Kara was still learning to navigate this human world of emotions, of feeling. She knew what she felt with Alice, there was a pure simplicity in loving her, but everything else… she was as newborn as he was, tearing off her protective shell and walking out into the world on untried legs.

For both their sakes, he dropped his gaze.

Androids had no need for sleep, but Kara settled beside Alice and closed her eyes, her body curled around the girl’s like a shield. No one would harm Alice without first going through Kara. He almost envied her in that moment, the serene peace that crossed her face as she gave way to whatever simulation of sleep an android could manage. It would be a long time, he thought, before he would allow himself that kind of vulnerability.

Instead, he leaned back into the pew and watched over them until the sun came up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. for a lot of reasons we're going to stop there  
> 2\. the main reason is: eventually i'd have to ask myself (please read in the tone of: do androids dream of electric sheep) "do androids have plastic dicks?" and logically, unless it's a sexbot they wouldn't but it's me so i'd find some contrived reason to answer yes  
> 3\. so let's stop there  
> 4\. i do imagine though the trio would meet up with luther again and become the Most Powerful foursome in all detroit because luther is soft and wonderful and deserves only the best things, and they wind up in jericho and help markus's robo-revolution and _don't_ go to canada.  
>  5\. and then they buy hank a foxy grandpa hat and he wears it. because that's character growth.  
> 6\. the chapter title 'the chinese room' refers to a thought experiment conducted by john searle to refute what the "strong AI" theory  
> 7\. interestingly enough: john searle was not refuting that machines could have consciousness but that a program cannot give a computer a "mind" or "conscious" no matter how human-like the program makes the computer seem  
> 8\. at least that's what i took from it: again, my expertise on the subject ends at answering yes to "would you fuck an android"  
> 9\. anyway i feel like any quantic dream thing i write should end on a fuck david cage note so:  
> 10: fuck david cage


End file.
